ROM Toolbox Pro's Pretty Nifty for Rooting Around in Your Phone

ROM Toolbox Pro, an app from JRummy Apps, is available for US$4.99 at
Google Play.

Privileged control of your smartphone is one of the killer features of the Android
operating system. This control, known as "root access," allows users to remove
manufacturer and mobile operator hardware and software limits to takeover the device.

ROM Toolbox Pro, from publisher JRummy Apps, takes the ROM Manager
concept one step further by providing a bunch of tools you can use to tweak the
ROMs you've installed.

If you've rooted your phone and replaced its operating system with one of your
choosing, you've probably been exploring some of these tools a la carte. ROM
Toolbox Pro packages many of them in one app.

First, don't look at any of these ROM manager and toolbox products to be a
replacement for initial grunt work. You will need to perform a root on your device before
the apps will work, and you will also need to research ROMs specific to your hardware.

For example, a custom ROM upgrade to ICS on certain phones will kill the 4G radio.

Initial Impresions

ROM Toolbox Pro is not particularly ROM-resplendent in that the list of included ROMs
is pitifully small. I found the usual CyanogenMod nightlies and not much else.

The Dalenet ROM that I have installed on a Toshiba tablet needs upgrading, but it was not
available in ROM Toolbox Pro, despite Dalenet being the ipso facto standard custom
ROM for that particular device.

That was disappointing, and I think one can assume that ROM Toolbox Pro is not
the destination for discovering ROMs -- it's more a place to manage and tweak your
existing ROMs.

Once I got over that disappointment, though, things went swimmingly.

Plenty of Features

The toolbox is impressive. An option to install multiple ROMs from an SD card is
provided. The expected fully featured backup kit is there, as is a root explorer -- a file
explorer that lets you get deep down into the belly of the device.

There's an app manager for backups; batch tasks like uninstalling and assigning permissions are
included. I discovered a scripter and terminal emulator used for
running scripts at the root level, and a switch to set apps to install on an SD card or internal storage.

Time for Some Tests

I was able to access the whole file system using the explorer tool.

I was then able to install custom boot animations from a supplied collection. I changed a
rather boring boot animated squiggle on one of my tablets to a glowing neon Android that
appears, glows bright and then fades away -- infinitely superior.

Playing with system fonts was a blast. I started off with Ming, a simple Eastwest
Eurasian-influenced font that made my phone look like the Pacific Rim dwelling animal
that it is.

I then moved over to a san-serif Helvetica derivative called Helvetika that's similar to the stock system font, although subtly more Germanic.

In Conclusion

All the extras were useful or fun to play with. If you haven't yet invested in some of
the a la carte root staples like Root Explorer, Titanium Backup Pro, SetCPU, or even
ROM Manager, you can consider the ROM Toolbox Pro package based on the financials alone.

The lack of included ROMs, or even an index of ROMs available elsewhere, meant I had to
discount ROM Toolbox Pro's score.

Patrick Nelson has been a professional writer since 1992. He was editor and publisher of the music industry trade publication Producer Report and has written for a number of technology blogs. Nelson studied design at Hornsey Art School and wrote the cult-classic novel Sprawlism. His introduction to technology was as a nomadic talent scout in the eighties, where regular scrabbling around under hotel room beds was necessary to connect modems with alligator clips to hotel telephone wiring to get a fax out. He tasted down and dirty technology, and never looked back.